Africa is a place that gets under your skin when you go there for the first time. Then it burrows into your heart with a connection that never leaves, no matter how long you've been away. In 1986 - 1987 I spent 6 months on an Overland camping expedition through 15 countries in Africa -- several of which I hadn't even heard of, Burkina Faso of Benin for instance. After returning from that adventure I planned to write a book from my travel journal. The Universe had other plans -- White Eagle started coming and talking to me. He told me I wouldn't write a book about overlanding through Africa but would write a book that "was a gift of light." He showed me a vision of a majestic, towering crystal that emanated beams of light like a light house. I didn't understand the vision and wasn't ready to write a spiritual book. I thought that was the end of that.

About two years ago my spirit began prodding me to lead a spiritual group to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. I wasn't ready. So I brought a group to Machu Picchu in Peru instead. (Don't even try to understand my logic, even my husband Ed has given up on that!) The tremendous growth that happened to me in Peru prepared me to again consider returning to Africa for a spiritual (and fun, of course) expedition. By the way, in the next several months I will be publishing my book The Eagle and the Condor: Timeless Secrets from an Unexpected Mystical Journey, about our quest in Peru -- with detours to Lemuria.

On Monday, February 6, 12 people from 3 continents will arrive in Arusha, Tanzania to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. As I meditate on our mission, I see the crystal I had envisioned 20 years ago being planted by all of us in the higher dimensions on the mountain's summit. It will send high vibrations, peace and support to the continent of Africa and the world. We won't know our complete spiritual mission until we are there, but we will not be doing it alone.   I humbly request your prayers and light for the smooth awakening of Africa and a lifting of the entire human light grid. You can join us by listening to the free audio meditation channeled from my guide "Mark." Go to http://www.jonettecrowley.com/ and click on the "Awakening Africa" meditation. It is beautiful. We are asking for special prayers as we climb during the full moon and summit at dawn on February 13th. That will be about 7pm Denver time on Sunday, February 12. If you live in Denver come to my house at 7pm for a meditation gathering. Dave will be organizing it, and if we can we will use Ed 's new cell phone to call in from the summit -- 19,300 feet high!

We will be doing meditations and processes throughout the trip. These will be available on tape and CD. Go to http://www.jonettecrowley.com/ to pre-order. It is a wonderful way to get the value of the trip without the hard work or expense!   If you want a personal taste of Africa without climbing Kilimanjaro, I have typed up my travel journal from 1987 and am offering it for sale. All the profits will go to a charity for AIDs orphans in Tanzania. You can buy it for $25 including shipping. Order it on our online store or call Dave at 303 689-9318. If you want to donate more you can go directly to http://www.lundy-africa.org/ 

At the end of this email I'm including the first diary entry of my 6 months in Africa to whet your interest... It is 83 pages and follows my trip from Egypt to Kenya, Tanzania, the Congo, Nigeria, Mali ... and more. Finally to Algeria where the journey continued but I no longer had the energy to keep a journal. 20 of us traveled in the back of an open truck, camping every night and cooking every meal over a fire from food we bought at local markets. The journal is colorful, gritty, and personal. You will have a sense of how Africa gets under your skin and burrows into your heart.  

With love, Jonette 

Page  1

AFRICAN JOURNAL

WEEK I

Sunday December 28, 1986

Nature has a mean way of giving me lime to get started on this journal.   Thanks.

Cleopatra hospital Cairo, Egypt

You must bring your own toilet paper to an Egyptian hospital, a towel too, if you care to shower.

This is no ordinary travel diary   It will be metered more by stream of consciousness (perhaps spurts of consciousness) than by "today we went to the pyramids...".  Yes, the pyramids, the temples, the bazaars will be there too—folded in as sour cream in an omelette.

The voice will change, I'm not a writer of discipline or practice who has found a voice (some personal yet commercial trademark to be discussed at writer's workshops).

The words, the humor, the tempo will change solely in response to moods. (Don't I feel powerful saying that?)

VL Also, it's easier to be flexible than to plan.  (Note: this is probably a Keynote of my life   It sneaked out much earlier than I expected). With­out a master plan I don't have to decide to whom this scrawled epistle is directed.

Is it only to me for this moment, as I sit in my hospital bed, a needle taped to my left hand, an empty Pepsi bottle on my right? Or is it for me when my feet have gone moldy and I want to recall the breeze that blew me across Africa? Or perhaps it's for my mother. (If that were the case my hand would already be editing—nothing about sex, or prophecies or voices in my head.) If it's for friends and lovers, ahh, then I would feel naked! Each friend has seen different parts of me bared, but altogether_ my hopes and my shames—exposed, without a word of introduction or explanation, that nakedness frightens me, yet is the challenge.

They just brought a groaning, semiconscious woman back to bed beside me—thunked her off the stretcher.  Groans are knifing .their way from outside the window too. At other noons I note the pjeste eerily chanting with acceptance.  Today, accenting the female wails of pain or fear at my side, the religious yells bring a slight feeling of panic to my blood pres­sure.

This is a real time journal.  Written babblings of the mind are intruded upon by reality. And so it must be.

Had my blood pressure not been increased by the raw sympathy of a sister in pain, I would have next considered my feelings should these pages be addressed to the world at large.

First of all, the world wouldn't give a damn.

Second, to be naked before a world who has never seen me clothed brings no fear.

Page 2

AFRICAN JOURNAL

There is some security in being part of a naked sample as large as the number of people on this earth   With confidence I can submit my quirks to a galactic statistician with his computer who will be able to prove that the parts of me that make my mother nervous, and provoke her into epitaphs of motherly wisdom:  "Whatever you do, don't mention this to your father," will merely place me in the middle of some or other bell curve measuring the relative sanity of the species.

That sentence was like a serpent eating its tail. I'll try not to be so indulgent of clauses in the future.

I'm writing in this less because I have something to say than to while
away the time to lunch. Then I can take my green capsule without throw-
ing up and settle down to a nap. I have graduated from yellow soup and
red jello. Yesterday's dinner looked the world like two turds nesting in
some potato chips.      

You pay for tea here on a cash and carry basis: 25 piasters and some fingernail polish to the serving girl.

Being in a foreign hospital is an experience as worthy of a journal as trodding through the dust of another burial edifice.

Only the doctors and Mary, a lovely nurse from New Zealand, speak English. My Arabic consists of thank you, please and tea. I've had a lot of tea.

Nursing care is at times haphazard.  Yesterday, they completely forgot my 2 o'clock injection. Mary told me that they need to be reminded of these things.  After all, they must have a million better things to do than to squirt liquid pain into the bruised vein of my left hand.

Lunch is late.

Maybe I should recap the lurching of events that brought me to Cleopatra's bed (bed number 309B, to be specific). Where does a recap start? With the thermometer reading on Christmas morning? With the Sydney gynecologist's assurance that it would be OK to travel? With tea and cake at Maisey's when, through an off-hand comment, the scene was set for Jan and me to gypsy around Africa? Or earlier still, when I sprouted the feet that would itch their way around the world?

Let's start with Christmas morning, with only enough flashback to give meaning to the events. After all, lunch can't be that far away.

Christmas morning was spent at the tip of the Sinai, near the mount
where Moses received the Ten Commandments.  (I'm told he didn't use
the steps as he hurried up to his appointment with God and fame.) It
could have been spectacular. No, it was spectacular, I was just in no mood
to fully appreciate it.              

My temperature had been climbing for several days, but on Christmas morning it was high enough to frighten me. I had been on a double dose of antibiotics. For a fever to rage in spite of that could only mean trouble.

I was in an uncharacteristically weepy mood.  I cried when I worried what might be wrong, I cried when people comforted me.